The unequal protection of children from assault is itself the discrimination.
Evidence
The majority’s response to the Section 15 argument — that Section 43 reflects a reasonable balance between child protection and parental authority rather than discrimination against children — was, in Arbour J’s view, precisely backwards. The majority was treating the historical permission to hit children as a value to be balanced rather than as a discrimination to be remedied. She was right to object to this framing. The Canadian law of assault has never permitted one adult to strike another adult in the name of “correction.” The only reason it has ever permitted this conduct toward children is that children were understood as subordinate persons to whom the ordinary protections did not apply. That understanding is the discrimination. — , The Rod and the Child, 9298
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the equality/discrimination framing of the Section 15 argument and to Arbour’s dissent in the same case; also parallels the ‘children as property’ history flagged in other chapters. — connects to: The reasonable chastisement defense violates equal protection for children — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 7597